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A heady dose of realism

July 21, 2010

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is on a cost-cutting warpath in the Garden State. His latest bull’s eye: superintendent pay. New Jersey has a whole lot of notoriously small school districts—591 of them—which not only adds up when it translates into paying 591 supes, but also encourages bidding wars between districts that drive up salaries. (A whopping 253 school administrators make more than Christie himself, who nets $175,000 a year.) Now superintendents will be paid on a sliding scale (the smaller your district, the smaller your salary); the leaders of the sixteen largest districts will see their salaries negotiated individually with Trenton. Christie’s doesn’t need legislative approval for the proposed regulations, which he hopes to get on the books by December. “People are bouncing around like free agents in baseball, and getting higher and higher salaries as they go,” explains Christie. The goal is to “shift the paradigm” about how district leaders are paid: If supes leave the Garden State to find higher salaries, so be it, he says. “[I]f that’s the sole reason they’re here, then goodbye.” Let’s hope supes don’t pull a LeBron in response.